OPEN: A work crew had been working at a construction site for about a week when the company hired a new man to replace a man who’d been hurt the day before. He was a broad-shouldered, powerful young man and was a good worker… but he was also annoying.
He was always bragging that he was stronger than anyone else at the worksite and he especially made fun of one of the older workmen.
Finally one of the older workers had had enough. "Sonny,” he said “why don’t you put your money where your mouth is. I will bet a week’s wages that I can haul something in a wheelbarrow over to that out building that you won’t be able to wheel back."
The boy smiled and said: “You’re on, old man. Let’s see what you got."
The old man reached out and grabbed the wheelbarrow by the handles. Then, nodding to the young man, he said, "All right, get in."
APPLY: That young man typifies much of how the world thinks about life. The world believes that power, and wealth, and position are all you need in this life. The world believes in the survival of the fittest - that the man with the most might and the most money … wins.
ILLUS: One man once observed: “The battle isn’t always to the strong, nor the race to the swift… but that’s the way to bet.”
And that truly makes sense. We’re in the midst of March Madness, where the best basketball teams have competed in the “Sweet Sixteen” and now they’re in the midst of the “Elite Eight” and eventually the “Final Four”. Ultimately it will boil down to a contest between two final teams, and the winner of that game will be declared the best college basketball team in the nation.
But if you were to take that final team – the best college basketball team in the nation – and you pitted them against EVEN the worst professional team in the NBA… it’s going to be a blowout.
That college team wouldn’t have the experience, the speed, the height, or the maturity to win that contest.
“The battle isn’t always to the strong, nor the race to the swift… but that’s the way to bet.”
That is – until - you get to Scripture.
When you open the pages of the Bible everything changes.
Time after time in Scripture you find the little guy beating the big guy.
· You have Moses walking into the court of the most powerful ruler of the day and his only weapon is a walking stick.
· You have an inexperienced leader named Gideon facing off against1000s upon 1000s of ruthless warriors with an army of only 300 men.
· You have a shepherd boy named David going into battle against a hardened giant of a man with nothing more than a sling and a stone.
Again, and again, and again, in Scripture… the little guy beats the big guy.
Might and money, power and position mean nothing. They still win.
Why?
Because those little buys served God… and God is bigger than everyone else.
ILLUS: One of my favorite scenes in action movies is when the good guy faces a gang of evildoers, and the one bad guy sneers: “What you gonna do now, smart guy?”
And the hero smiles and says: “You better go get a couple more boys and make this an even fight.”
I love that line!
AND that’s how it is in Scripture.
The bad guys swagger out against God’s people and brag that they’re going to destroy them.
And God just smiles and says: “You better go get yourself a couple more armies and make this a fair fight.”
ILLUS: Back in II Chronicles we’re told the story of the king of Assyria named Sennacherib who comes sweeping down out of the north with his omnipotent army. He’s beaten nation after nation and now he’s come to Jerusalem and surrounds it intending to bring it to its knees. He stands at the wall of the city and begins taunting the people of Israel by saying:
“…Do not let Hezekiah deceive you and mislead you like this. Do not believe him, for no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or the hand of my fathers. How much less will your god deliver you from my hand! Who of all the gods of these nations that my fathers destroyed has been able to save his people from me? How then can your god deliver you from my hand?” 2 Chronicles 32:14-15
And God just smiled.
And He sent a single angel to do battle.
And before the night was out – 185,000 of Sennacherib’s best soldiers lay dead on ground. Sennacherib was forced to return home in disgrace and his own sons assassinated him while he worshipped in his temple.
The Bible’s main message is this:
The little guy who trusts in God can whip any guy on the block.
Because God is bigger than anyone else.
As it says in Romans 8:31 “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Thus when Paul writes that God told him "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness"… and then Paul concludes “when I am weak, then I am strong”… you know what Paul’s talking about.
This is such a powerful truth that we find great comfort in it.
There’s an old Gospel hymn that says it this way (sing it with me)
“I am weak but thou art strong, keep me Jesus from all wrong
I’ll be satisfied as long, as I walk, let me walk close to thee.”
There is power to be found in walking with Jesus.
There is power to be found in living close to God
Because I AM weak… but He is strong.
Now, that truth – that I am weak - forces me to do something I wouldn’t do if I were strong. That hymn we just sang says “I’ll be satisfied as long as I walk, let me walk… (WHERE?) close to Thee.
My strength in life only comes from walking close to Jesus.
Philippians 4:13 promises us: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (NKJV)
· I gain HIS strength
· HIS power
· HIS ability to deal with the difficulties of this life.
And I gain that strength only because I walk close to Him.
ILLUS: It’s kind of like “strength training”.
How many of you have ever done any strength training?
I’ve done enough strength training to know – I don’t know what I’m doing. It seems every time I go all out to work my muscles… I hurt myself. I pull muscles, or sprain an ankle or something.
In order for me to be successful in strength training, I need something I don’t often use. Do you have an idea what I need? I need a TRAINER. I need somebody to help my training so I don’t hurt myself again.
And when it comes to our spiritual strength training many people think they can get by with doing all by themselves. They don’t believe they need a trainer. But they end up either hurting themselves or getting less strength than they would have had someone been there to guide them.
God says “Let Me be your trainer!”
In Psalm 29:11 David declares “The LORD gives STRENGTH to his people…”
That’s a promise directly from God. He is offering to be your strength trainer
ILLUS: But too often we don’t want His strength, because we think we’re strong enough on our own. Kyle Idelman tells a story of the time his 4 year old daughter came into his office, just as he rearranging the furniture. He had this large heavy desk and was pushing it from one side of the office to the other.
His daughter wanted to help so she got between his arms and just started pushing with all her might. She huffed and puffed, stained and struggled with her dad behind her.
At one point she stopped, looked at her dad and said, “Daddy, you are in my way, just stand over there.”
Kyle hid his smile and did as she said. Again, she huffed and puffed, struggled and strained but this time the desk didn’t budge an inch. Daddy wasn’t behind her pushing any longer.
That’s what too many Christians end up doing with God.
And that points to another reason why we need to understand the truth of we are weak and He is strong. You see - until we realize God is strong and we’re weak - we’ll tend to live our Christianity backwards.
· We’ll tend to live as if God needs us… not the other way around.
· We’ll tend to believe God needs OUR time, talent, treasures, in order to survive.
· We’ll believe God depends on us far more than we depend upon Him, because He just couldn’t live without us.
But, if God’s not impressed by the biggest, baddest, braggingest bad guys on earth, He’s certainly not going to be all that impressed with our puny efforts.
But here in II Corinthians 12, we find that Paul was tempted with that feeling.
To keep me FROM BECOMING CONCEITED because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.” 2 Corinthians 12:7
It’s easy to picture Paul getting conceited.
I mean - the man’s a legend.
o Whenever he spoke large crowds of people gathered and were convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ.
o He started a number of new churches throughout Greece and Rome.
o Knew the Bible backwards and forward.
o He wrote half of the New Testament.
o And on top of that (according to what he tells us here in II Corinthians) God had given him a vision where he was actually in paradise and saw and heard things he wasn’t permitted to tell us about.
I mean - who wouldn’t suffer a little from a bit of pride if they had accomplished that much for the Kingdom?
But that pride would have hurt Paul’s ministry.
It would have gotten in the way of what God wanted to do thru him.
As Bill Cosby once said: “People say: ‘God will find a way.’ God can’t find a way if you’re in the way.”
And Paul’s pride would have gotten in God’s way, so God sent a “sent a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment” him.
That seems kind of mean.
Why would God do that?
God did that because Paul’s pride would have made him think God was weak and he was strong. It would have made him believe that God needed to do things Paul’s way rather than the other way around.
ILLUS: At one church that I served, there was an Elder (we’ll call him Fred) who was a bit of a problem. He was an older gentleman who gave of his heart and his soul to the church because he really loved God and he loved that congregation.
But he had an annoying habit of wanting things to go his way and he could be kind of heavy handed about it.
Years before, he had survived a horrible experience – he had been in an accident and nearly died. It was only by the grace of God that he survived, and that’s what he personally believed. He believed that God had saved him from physical death so that he could dedicate his life to working for Him. And that’s what he did. He was a powerful worker for Christ.
But in the process he developed what some have called a “messiah complex”. Do you know what a Messiah Complex is? It’s when someone believes that they are the messenger of God - that nothing they say or do can possibly be wrong.
Fred believed that about himself. And he believed that God needed things to go FRED’S way in the church… and if you didn’t do it FRED’S way, you were the enemy and needed to be defeated.
And because Fred believed things needed to be his way, when a difficult time came upon that congregation, he hurt that church and almost caused it to split.
As that old Gospel hymn says: “I am weak but thou are strong… Jesus keep me from all wrong”.
It’s a good thing to remember - you and I are weak, but God is strong. For if we don’t remember that, then we can end up doing wrong because we’ll get in God’s way. We won’t give God the room He needs to work in our lives.
So, we need to remember that we are weak for three reasons:
1. Because we are.
2. And because if we don’t, we’ll risk falling into the temptation of pride.
3. And 3rd – if we don’t remember our weakness - we’ll miss one of the greatest truths in Scripture: That the strength of Christ’s Kingdom is built upon weakness.
Jesus said: "My grace is sufficient for you, for MY POWER IS MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS." 2 Corinthians 12:9
This is the universal truth of Christ’s kingdom.
The strength of Christ’s Kingdom is built upon weakness.
And you have to look no further than the cross to see that it is true:
In II Corinthians 13:4we’re told that Jesus “was crucified IN WEAKNESS, yet he lives by God’s power.”
Christ built His kingdom on the weakness He experienced on the cross.
One poet (Dorothy L. Sayers) put it this way:
“Hard it is, very hard, to travel up the slow and
stony road to Calvary, to redeem mankind;
Far better to make but one resplendent miracle,
Lean through the cloud, lift the right hand of power
And with a sudden lightning smite the world perfect.
Yet this was not God’s way. Who had the power,
But set it by, choosing the cross, the thorn,
the sorrowful sounds.
Something there is, perhaps that power destroys in passing, something supreme.
To whose great value in the eyes of God
that cross, that thorn, and those five wounds bear witness.”
It would have been so much easier for God to just lean through the clouds and smite the world perfect. To wipe it clean of all the taint of sin. But Jesus didn’t do it that way, because in order to bring us salvation… Jesus had to become weak. As Philippians 2 tells us, He had to set aside His divinity and humble himself, making Himself NOTHING, taking the very nature of a servant. Becoming human and humbling himself even unto death… even death on a cross.
The world looks upon this Biblical truth and they can’t understand it.
Why allow Himself to die in weakness?
Why die in this helpless and humiliating way?
He’s supposed to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
He’s God above all gods.
He has the all the forces of heaven at His beck and call.
As Jesus told Pilate, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” Matthew 26:53
But Jesus couldn’t buy our salvation by force.
The constant message throughout the Bible was that in order for us to be forgiven of the guilt and shame of our past – something had to die. Again and again, in the Old Testament, worshippers needed to bring a sheep, a goat, a bull, or some other living creature to the Temple to be sacrificed for their sins. A sacrifice was needed so that – even though they deserved to die for the guilt of their sins something could be made to die in their place.
But the New Testament tells us that everyone knew that the blood of those innocent animals really couldn’t take away sin. They were pointing forward to the time when SOMEONE would make that choice and allow Himself to die in our place.
That someone was God. He set aside His Godhood and took on the form of a man and gave His life the ultimate sacrifice for sins.
On that cross, Jesus became weak, so that we could become strong.
As Paul wrote in I Corinthians: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1Corinthians 1:18
Jesus power was made perfect in His weakness upon the cross.
He became weak so that we could become strong.
“I am weak, but Thou are strong. Keep me Jesus from all wrong.
I’ll be satisfied as long as I walk, let me walk, close to Thee.”
